Bubble

Dreamed that I was on the moon.

The place I was in was something like a cross between an apartment and the ISS. It was an academy for teenagers who were learning about science. I recall vaguely thinking about how horrible it would be if someone accidentally broke a window. But there was a mail package delivery and the woman who delivered it was outside of the building, and I remember wondering how she was breathing and why our air wasn't rushing out. It seemed like a normal building with normal windows, but the walls were grey and bare.

She told us that she really liked an environment I'd animated. Suddenly my boyfriend was there and she told him "watch the pink trees, I find it incredibly soothing," (referring to the animation I'd made). For some reason, I was really embarrassed about the animation, I didn't think it was very good. The package turned out to be two huge pink fluffy bath mats, which covered the entire floor of the room we were in once I'd laid them out.

At one point, the professor was explaining how "days" on the moon were different and it rotated in a different way than Earth.

Last few nights...

06/12/14:
I dreamed about a tree.

It was a huge tree with black bark and sprawling, twisted limbs... if anybody has seen a Live Oak, it was sort of like that, but much bigger. I know there is something wrong with it.

It is outside of the fence. The fence is wooden and rickety. It encloses something, but I'm not sure what. It's always dark, always night. The world feels very "small", like the entire world just surrounds the tree and the fence but doesn't spread very far beyond them. I am trying to somehow stop the evil I know is infecting the tree's roots.

Some sort of burrowing creature is inside of the fence, digging through the soft loamy earth. It's like a brown, short-haired dog sized ferret thing that can talk. Its tunnel reaches the "evil" roots. Once they are exposed, the evil is able to spread inside of the fence. It was an accident, the creature was just trying to create a "home" burrow. It apologizes and says it will make its home elsewhere.

I have to attend a class. My homework isn't done because I've been spending all of my time and energy trying to contain the evil. The teacher knows this, and fudges my grade. I feel like my classmates resent me because of it. I'm overstretched, though. The class is for a cello-like instrument. Not only is my instrument damaged, but in order to make a passing grade, I still have to play some songs for an exam, and they're too difficult for me because I haven't had time to practice. I feel overwhelmed and depressed.


06/14/14:
I have vague recollections of a nightmare. There is some sort of evil stitched-together zombie child. It's gray. It's stitched to a man's hip. I am trying to protect some other (living) children to it but it keeps "absorbing" large, bloody chunks of them and the whole situation is horrifying. I wake up but am still sort of half-asleep and the feeling of horror lingers until I fall back asleep.

I wake up from my usual night's sleep in order to go to the restroom. Don't recall my dreams. When I get back, I settle in, noting in my mind that this would be a good time for a lucid attempt, and then I allow myself to drift off.

One of the ways I initiate lucid dreaming is visualization. My particular mode is exploring an environment in my head, in detail. I know I'm entering the dream when the environment becomes easier to explore and more unpredictable. Sometimes there is a sense of "breaking the tension" and moving into lucidity. Sometimes it's more gentle. Sometimes I feel like things are still fuzzy and don't get the clarity I want. Like all lucid techniques, it's a mixed bag.

I grab onto the first location that drifts into my mind - an old apartment I used to live in. I am outside on the front lawn. I walk down the lawn and across the street and head for a stream that is on the other side of the complex. It is lined on either side by thick trees that were simply never knocked down by the developer.

When I reach the stream, I begin my explorations. I decide to do something I did there a lot as a child - look for rocks that would look good once they had been through a rock tumbler. I pick up a few rocks and examine them, but don't see anything I like. I continue walking down the stream, splashing my feet in the water.

The stream becomes larger and deeper. I have reached a part of the stream that no longer looks familiar. I note that my visualization has become more intense. I walk from the center of the stream to the bank on the side, which has become muddy. As I continue walking, the stream becomes deeper and more turbulent, and has cut deeper into the banks. The banks have gone from the soft dark brown of midwestern soil to a burnt sienna color, and are gaining more of a texture of clay. If anybody has been to Georgia, they may know the color of soil I'm talking about.

The stream has become closer to a river. I imagine that a "duck" style vehicle could probably float down it now. For some reason, a roller coaster is now running along the side of the bank, but it isn't full scale. I take note of it. I try to assess my dream state, but it still feels "thin". There's not really much clarity, and I feel like trying to exert direct influence right now may cause it to fall apart.

The roller coaster has disappeared. I now see a pristine snow drift and a snow-covered hill leading upward from the river bank. I decide to see where the snow leads.

I begin walking through the snowy area. The snow becomes deeper, and as I continue forward, I start having trouble walking through it. I am heading up a steep hill, struggling through the snow. I look up the hill, and realize it leads up a mountain. I look down and I can see the path I've made through the snow. The stream is nowhere in sight - I'm now on a mountain in a mountain range. This is the tallest mountain. It's daytime, and the sky is very blue against the sparkling white snow.

I decide to continue heading upward to see what is up there. The sky becomes darker. The snow is almost up to my chest, and the way up is still very steep. I have no climbing equipment, so I flounder and climb the best I can. At this point, I feel like I am "deep" enough in the dream to start changing things, but I'm genuinely curious as to where this all leads.

Upward, in the distance, wind is picking snow up off the drifts and driving it in swirls across the mountainside. Through the wind and snow, nestled under a massive overhang in the rock of the mountain, I see... a fortress? Castle? It's made of stone. There are no lights; even though it is aesthetically beautiful, in a cold way, all of the openings look defense-oriented - places for archers or people with spears. The only place I see a dim light is what I assume is the entrance.

I reach the door. There is a flat area of stone that forms sort of a "landing", a level area carved out of the rock and laid with decorative stonework. A large, wooden door leads to what I assume is the interior of the fortress. The aesthetic is quite Gothic (but think of something in the style of Rheinstein Castle, not something like Cologne Cathedral). There are lights on either sides of the door, but interestingly, they seem more like gaslights than torches. The wood is stained a warm brown color and the fittings look like they are made of bronze.

There is a lever to open the door in front of it. I ponder how that really isn't very, you know, secure, but I get the feeling that not everybody is actually able to pull it. Only certain people can. I pull it with no problem, though. The door opens.

I walk into a gallery with an extremely high ceiling. There are massive chandeliers lit with huge candles, I count about 8 of them, and each one looks like it is the size of a small room. They look a little... Victorian. The whole thing seems cathedral-esque, but when I examine the gallery, I see that there are actually walkways high up on either side where archers could perch. Anybody trying to march through here could be easily sniped.

I'm not sure what I'm expecting. There are 2 doors at the very end of the gallery. The one to the right is open, and in the room there is a small screen, and it seems to be a bedroom of some sort, which I think is kind of weird. Then I realize it's a place for guards to rest, where they could easily access the gallery, so this might be an area that also leads to barracks. I still think it's a really weird layout. I go through the door that is right in front of me, though.

It leads to a dark room with stone walls and outlets to a hallway on either side. I'm not sure what I expected, but it wasn't this. The scenery still feels blurry and not 100% real, which is also a bit frustrating.

I walk through the door directly across me. I am in another room with high ceilings and a large chandelier. Things are getting blurry and kind of falling apart. The architecture is getting weird and I feel like it's getting "wrong". I begin to feel frustrated. I'm still trying to look for a throne room, or something, but I keep encountering weird rooms like this that just don't seem to fit the layout right. I'm looking for a dream character of any sort of significance, at this point, since I haven't really seen anybody.

There's another screen with someone behind it... I look around for a person. I'm actually looking around for what my dreamscape would consider to be the "leader" of this place, but instead, a woman who looks like a nanny appears. I don't know what small children she'd be minding, I assumed the ones of the head of the castle. At the time, I assumed there would be some, but now that I think about it there don't seem to be any. I think they might be around, but I don't see any. I should have talked to her, and asked what was up, but I didn't. I have an irritating tendency to stay silent during these dreams.

I can't get the DC I want to appear. I wake up.

The castle is cool, though. Once I've been to a dream-location, it seems like it can be a little easier getting there again (cottage is still hard, though). I wish I had spent more time examining individual parts of the fortress, rather than just pressing onward. If I end up there again, I probably will.

So, I haven't been keeping very good track of dreams.

Helicopter:
About a week ago - had a dream I was in a helicopter with someone. I looked down and there was fog rolling across a field, rolling in waves like an ocean. There was a storm in the distance, I could see it across several farm fields, but it was beautiful. On the edge of the fields there was a forest. The helicopter flew down until it was only a few feet above the ground, and we flew through a forest. I had a vague idea I was dreaming, and I wanted to share this with one of my friends, so I tried to turn the helicopter pilot into one of my friends. I looked away and looked back. When I looked back, her face was blurred out, but she hadn't fully changed. When this stuff happens, you'd think it would be super creepy in a Silent Hill sort of way, but when I am dreaming it's just a "this didn't completely work" sort of thing and doesn't bother me. I woke up.

I've had a few lucid dreams over the past 2 weeks but I've also been bad about recording those, so I'll just record last night:


Lucid:
Woke up ~8 am. Got up to use the bathroom. Went back to bed with the idea that it would probably be easy to transition to a lucid dream at this point.

Fell asleep, as normal. At some point, I became semi-aware while I was in the grey fog. I am familiar with the fog, by now. I knew that because I didn't "have a body" at the moment, I wouldn't be able to enter a dream (this is something it took a while to figure out, and it's just the way it works for me). I decided to do my technique of "walking" forward until my feet took form I could see my feet. I looked down at where my feet would be and began "walking". After spending a while doing it, suddenly my feet came into being. Once they came into being, I decided to try to bring an environment into being. Suddenly, the world popped into place. It startled me so much that I fell on my butt.

I was now sitting in a yard in front of a house. It was very clear. There was a house behind me that I didn't notice very much, and trees all around me. The grass I was sitting on was vibrantly green and soft. I saw some little flowers growing in it (like little daisies) and thought about picking one. Before I did that, though, I decided to look around. Everything was crystal clear, no "dream fuzziness" at all.

I heard a car in the distance. It stopped at the curb next to me. Curious, I stood up to take a look. I could see the driver inside, his features were quite clear without the "dream fuzzies" that sometimes happen when I see a dream character. He opened the door and stepped out and suddenly everything became fuzzy and gray again.

My body had disappeared again. I began to rub my hands together. After a while of rubbing, they suddenly appeared in front of me. I was pleased and tried to cause the landscape to reappear. Unfortunately, I guess I hadn't stabilized enough because my hands disappeared again and I woke up a little bit.

I settled back down and tried to imagine walking while looking at my feet again, and holding the hand of a friend to try to make them appear with me once I "existed" again, as sort of an anchor (I am holding onto them and they are in the environment that we are both in, so they stabilize me and vice versa). It doesn't really work and I feel like I can feel my feet shuffling in my bed (I'm never completely sure if they actually are or it is an illusion that they are).

It doesn't really work. I give up and drift into deeper sleep.

Kitten:
I dream I am robbing banks as an accomplice with a dream character (Caucasian guy with dark shaggy hair, thin and generally unhealthy and unreliable looking). At one point we end up in a production room where people are packing up cocaine for distribution. I have a tiny orange tabby kitten and I am worried about its welfare. I carry it with me at all times. We are going to go rob a bank and crash at a motel and my fellow bank-robber tells me to just leave the kitten outside and it will be fine. I start to leave it there but panic and come back and bring it with me. It's a huge inconvenience, but I cannot bring myself to leave my kitten alone outside where something may happen to it.

I see on the news that I am being listed as an accomplice for murders, but I haven't murdered anybody, and I didn't know that my bank-robbing buddy has been killing people. I decide I need to get away now, that even if I'm on the hook for robberies I'm definitely innocent of killing people. I can't leave my kitten behind, though, I am too worried about it. I'm also worried something will happen to it if my bank-robbing accomplice or the police catch up to me. I run through the woods (I don't have the van/car) and come upon a house there. I know that one of my IRL friends, James, lives in it, and that it would be safe to leave the kitten with him because I trust him. He opens the door and is friendly, as if he doesn't know I've been robbing banks (or doesn't care), and happily agrees to take care of my kitten.